With a new move to make its products work better with open source and its effort to buy Yahoo, Microsoft shows it wants to move into the present.

By David Kirkpatrick, senior editor

cnnad_createAd("636629","http://ads.cnn.com/html.ng/site=cnn_money&cnn_money_position=220x200_ctr&cnn_money_rollup=technology&cnn_money_section=quigo&params.styles=fs","200","220"); NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Microsoft is at a critical moment in its history and is taking brilliant steps to remake itself. Thursday's announcement that it would open itself up to far greater interoperability with other types of software, including open source, is the latest big move. But the bigger step is its $44 billion bid for Yahoo.